Using Music To Assist in Pain Treatment

When you have chronic lower back pain, you try different treatment modes to regulate your back pain. First you take over the counter medications as analgesics to relief the infrequent lower back pain. Then, massage is a lower cost treatment for lower back pain.

Then next, you take some physical therapy treatments. Your back pain is like an unwelcome guest, it left for a few days and it returns, whether you like it or not. It adds more stresses to your life, your morning wake up becomes more difficult.

After a few weeks or months, you combine the back pain treatments together, more over the counter medications, more physical therapies, and sooner or later you will consider music as part of the lower back relief system.

When you have physical pain, your biological system generates more hormones that add to the stress of your lungs and your heart system. Your blood pressure surges upward and strokes and heart attacks can happen in a short period of time. Your immune system weakens because you are more depressed, and you are not opened to the healthy sunshine of the universe.

Binaural Beats and Music in helping Pain Relief

trapese (Photo credit: kata rokkar)

We’ve all heard the adage of “music soothes the savage beast”. Indeed, music, whether it is drums, coconut shells, or clanking bones, has been used by humans as far back as we can discover. Music, and sound, have always had a profound effect upon humans, and even animals, and we can investigate it as a tool for pain management.

We take sound, our hearing, and our appreciation of music for granted. But actually the psycho-physics of sound perception are very complex. Here is a very simplified explanation; pressure waves move through the atmosphere and then push on the tympanic membrane (ear drum). From that point, a mechanical effect is translated into an electrochemical effect. A neuro-electrical signal travels into the brain, where it is further processed. The result is sound, voice, and music perceptions.

Binaural beats is a phenomenon where a different frequency sound is played into each ear. As an example, a 400 hertz signal goes into one ear, and a 410 hertz signal goes into the other. The brain reprocesses the combined signals into a 10 hertz signal follow. This is perceived as a pulsing sound.

So how does this apply to pain control, or pain reduction? Using modern scientific equipment, such as EEG’s, heart monitors, respiration rate monitors, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), it has been clinically proven that binaural beats, as well as music in general do affect our health; physically, psychologically, emotionally. Certain research has demonstrated that binaural beats can trigger the activity in the brain pituitary gland, flooding the body with dopamine.

Dopamine is a brain neurotransmitter that has been associated with “feel-good”, or pleasure feelings. In fact, dopamine is one of the brain chemicals affected by traditional pain medications, as well as anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. The brain chemical imbalance theory deals with SSRI’s, which are selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. In simple terms, certain drugs increase the serotonin levels in the brain, which also act as pain reducers.

It should be noted that music therapy is a clinically recognized health profession! That’s right , there is the American Music Therapy Association. Music is used in the health professions to manage the physical, emotional, cognitive and even social needs of patients. Music therapy has been used to treat autism, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. It has also been applied to stroke victims, and also used in schools, alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers, psychiatric centers, correctional institutions, cancer centers, and medical hospitals.

Binaural beats have been used across a wide range of health care areas, including pain management. Some examples are increasing concentration, relaxation, meditation, stimulating creativity, self-hypnosis, and even treating hangovers! For people who have long term, chronic pain, and have tried all the other usual options (medications, physical therapy, etc..) with limited success, trying music therapy may actually modulate or reduce your lower back pain levels.

Take a look at your local public library, or even ask your health practitioner, for help in using music therapy. There are plenty of online resources to try out actual binaural beats recordings. Some just use the basic phased sound, others embed the binaural beats (hemisync) into music tracks or nature sounds (ocean surf, rainforest, wind, birds and jungle sounds, etc.) Do you know a musician in your local city or village? Discuss with him regarding Binaural Beats music, it can open new door for your pain management therapy.